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I've got about 70% so far. Steam must have a pretty hardcore server infrastructure behind it because there's barely any talk of bandwidth problems. I've been virtually maxed out the entire time (~60KB) and there's a lot of talk of people grabbing the entire thing at 2.5mb+. Impressive stuff, although obviously the demand is going to continue to escalate.

I'll probably download it soon. I for one am excited for HL2. I was excited for Doom3, but still haven't bought it yet. I have other financial obligations, but I'm sure I'll be impressed with both games when I do get them. What exactly is the preload?

The preload just involves downloading most of the game in encrypted form; the idea being that when it's released you can pay for an activation code, download a few more files (presumably) and start playing immediately.